Author's Note: This is my first Skins fic and first time writing in... years. Let me say I have no planned-out plot for this story and am honestly basing it off a sort of current life event. If anyone has any suggestions or input or even just wants to give some pats on the back it's all appreciated and taken in.
Leave a review and let me know what you think so far!
Side note - I'm American, so bear with the lack of 'English dialec', so to speak.
Disclaimer: I do not own Skins. I never will.
Life is terribly, terribly boring.
Every morning you wake up promptly at 7:06. You turn off your pre-set alarms, grab your pre-set outfit, and head to the restroom for your pre-set toiletries. Brush your teeth for 48 seconds. Apply deodorant 3 strokes under each arm. Grab your keys from the second hook next to the kitchen door, and bike to work.
Your life is terribly, terribly boring.
"Good morning, this is Naomi," you recite this at least fifty times a day, to a number of clients who have heard it every time they've phoned and yet, they still cannot recall your name.
"Naomi, it's Duncan," your nasally boss informs you, "Did you send out the back order report yet?" Yes, yes I did, you think. I sent it at 8:30am just like I have for the past eleven months I've worked here. You even confirmed its arrival via email.
"I did, sir, must not've sent through. I'll resend right away," A pause and a dial tone suffice as your reply.
Eleven months as a customer service representative (though you know with all your side duties, you really are more the office manager) for a chemical supply company claiming to be 'green' and is everything but. That means eleven months of your growing plan to pack up all your shit and move to New York City. Three weeks from now, May 1st, and you and your best mates will be on a plane to the states with nothing but necessities and each other.
And the hope of something more to this terribly, terribly boring life.
"Mum, I've told you. I'm not interested in London. I'm not interested in fucking Scotland, I'm going to New York City," You have this conversation with Gina almost every other day. You phone her to try and be a good daughter and are gifted with an unwelcomed lecture.
"Love, all I'm saying is to consider your options. New York is so… Expensive. Not that I don't think you can do it, because I know you can, but wouldn't you rather stay close to home?"
"You know better than anyone, Mum, there is nothing for me in Bristol," You hear her audibly sigh in resignation. She knows. She knows and you can feel her mind asking the question she dares not to say.
"Are you going to contact Emily?" She said it.
On your last day of work you grabbed the two photos from your office – you, Cook, and Effy in your current flat; You and Emily in the same flat, back when it was "ours" and not just "yours". And you leave with your final pay and no fond memories to ponder on your ride home.
You can hear Cook's Mad Caddies record playing through your front door, and no sooner than your bag is slumped off your shoulder, a bottle of vodka is in your hand and the potent smell of spliff strongly in your nose.
"There she is! The woman of the hour!" Cook hands over the spunk and takes a swig from the bottle you picked up. "How was it? Tell the right fuckers off?" His hug is as comforting as it is disturbing, mostly because your face is buried into his armpit and you haven't seen him change his clothes in three days.
"Obviously." You prepare for your big speech, "I said, with a prize winning scowl might I add, 'Thank you for everything you've taught me about this company and upstanding customer service, but most importantly thank you for teaching me the importance of pulling hair." Effy, who had been watching silently from the sofa, shook her head and gave you a knowing look.
Cook releases you from his death grip with a puzzled look on his face. "Blondie, I don't fuckin' get it. You've been waiting practically a year to tell these blokes off and you thank them with some shit line about your fuckin' hair?"
"You didn't let me finish," you move over to the sofa and Effy places herself on your lap, "I learned if you're gonna fuck me in the ass, at least pull my hair!" You finish while Effy helps act out the scene, hair tugging and all.
Cook's laughter lifts all your heaviness. Effy joins in and retreats to her spot at the end of the sofa, giving you a cheers as you both throw back your bottles.
"You didn't say that," Blame Effy and her 'abilities' to know.
"No, I didn't." You head to your room which is both you and Effy's, consisting of a mattress on the floor, a closet of mixed clothes, and the small boxes of personal items you've already packed for the big move. She follows behind and closes the door. The volume in the outside room increases as Cook sings along to 'Leavin''.
"I found this box in the top of the closet," The last thing you want to look at is placed directly in your line of sight, in between your feet you were so deeply staring at, right over the snag in the carpet you were using as an escape to facing the conversation at hand.
"Eff, this is really happening. We're moving to another fucking country. In like, a week. And we've got little to fuck all money and I have no clue how well this job will be and Cook doesn't even have a job and we're all going to be in this musty fucking cramped flat with no privacy and we don't know anyone—"
"We know Emily," She cuts off your rant that was slowly building in anxiety, "We never have any money and Cook never works but still finds money for rent, and we already live in a musty, cramped flat with no privacy. Not much change. And," You hate when Effy looks at you so reassuringly confident, "We know Emily."
That's where she's wrong. We do not know Emily. You knew Emily, up until one year one month and ten days ago when she closed the door to your shared place and, consequentially, her heart. And you have not known her since.
You all slept most of the plane ride. Then due to jet lag and the drastic change in, well, everything else, you all slept most of your first day in New York City. The apartment is depressingly small: one open space with a breakfast bar and the bare essentials for a kitchen (which will be the living room, dining room, kitchen, and you, Cook, and Effy's bedrooms in one), and a bathroom with cracked tiles and a slight mold problem. But you love it because it's not Bristol and is not filled with the ghosts of your past.
Cook finds a hole-in-the-wall bar the first night. It's about an eight minute walk if you include the time it takes to ascend the six flights of stairs to your new home, and is just dingy enough for the three of you to fit in.
"I believe this calls for a celebration!" Cook's booming energy bounces off the walls of the small dive, "Bartender, me and my two birds here just came all the way from the UK. Whatd'ya says we get some TEQUILA!" He slides back to our table with a tray of shot glasses and I know already this bar will become our second home.
Cook holds up his first shot glass and makes his toast, "To American women!" And we drink to it, though Effy shrugs.
"To paying twice as much for rent and getting half the space!" You're cynical toast goes down with the burning liquid.
"To letting go of the past, or maybe fixing it," Effy's words and stare bore through to your slowly-fuzzing brain and you're grateful to drink as a distraction.
So, as not to damper the night, you muster up the best enthusiasm you can spare and toast, "To New York fucking City!"
"Naomi?" It's dark, and it's late, and it's a tad loud in the bar, but you know that husky voice in a crowd of thousands.
"Emilio!" Cook is the first of you three to face exactly who you were running from. To? From.
And you have to laugh, because really, your life is far from terribly, terribly boring.